The present invention relates to electronic price label (EPL) systems, and more specifically to a method of delaying availability of price changes to checkout terminals following EPL price changes.
In a traditional retail store, bar code scanners rely on price information maintained within a price-lookup (PLU) file. The PLU data file is typically stored in a single location at host server.
EPL systems typically include a plurality of EPLs for each merchandise item in a store. EPLs display the price of corresponding merchandise items on store shelves and are typically attached to a rail along the leading edge of the shelves. A store may contain thousands of EPLs to display the prices of the merchandise items. The EPLs are coupled to a central server from where information about the EPLs is typically maintained in an EPL data file. The EPL data file contains EPL identification information and EPL merchandise item information.
During management of prices in EPL systems, a situation may occur in which a customer sees a first price when viewing an EPL associated with an item, but sees a second price different from the first price when the item is scanned or recorded at the checkout counter. This situation occurs when the price of the item has been changed in the PLU file after the customer has viewed the EPL, but before the customer has checked out. This situation tends to occur most often in transaction establishments that regularly schedule price changes during peak shopping hours and in transaction establishments that have 24-hour shopping. The chance of this situation occurring increases with the length of time the consumer spends shopping in the transaction establishment.
Local state requirements mandate that there be at least some fraction of a minute delay between the time a price is changed and the time the new price is made available to checkout terminals. Additional delay may be necessary to increase the chance that consumers will purchase the item for the price they saw on the EPL.
While different methods of creating this delay already exist, they all entail suspending server processes for a given amount of time or creating additional processes which flow through lists containing PLU numbers, new prices, and times to apply the new prices. Both of these solutions negatively impact server performance.
Therefore, it would be desirable to provide a method of delaying availability of price changes to checkout terminals following EPL price changes which does not negatively impact server performance.